HTC unveiled the Desire Eye this afternoon at the company’s Double Exposure event in New York City. HTC has differentiated the Desire Eye from the competition in an interesting way, as the undoubted highlight of the smartphone, which sports a water-resistant plastic body and removable battery, is the 13-megapixel front-facing camera with dual-LED flash.

The array, capable of capturing 1080p video and bordered by a dedicated microphone, is intended specifically to capture high-quality “selfies.” It is a first for a smartphone, HTC was eager to note.

The Desire Eye does not cut many corners. A Snapdragon 801 processor paired with 2GB of RAM drives the smartphone, which features a 5.2-inch 1080p display. The Desire Eye retains HTC’s much-lauded BoomSound technology, and internally packs 32GB of storage, a microSD slot, and a 2400mAh capacity battery. The rear-facing camera matches the front shooter spec-for-spec, including the dual-LED flash and dedicated microphone.

HTC has tried to leverage the pair of high-quality cameras in logical ways. Snapping a selfie is as easy as raising the phone and issuing a voice command. The Eye Experience app includes a Split Capture mode, which takes a photo with both cameras at once and merges them together. Another feature, compatible with all video conferencing apps, keeps up to four faces in focus at once.

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Am I the only one who is bummed they didn’t announce a HTC m8 prime/max? I was waiting for it after all the rumors that challenges the Note 4, bet with the way their bezels are set up it would have been a way bigger phone than the note 4 just to match the screen size anyway. Sigh….. Note 4 here I come I guess.

Me

Is anybody outside of women & metrosexual guys, interested in this as their daily driver?

Me

Would have been nicer if it was more compact. Like 4.7 in screen.

Dennis N Nguyen

Does the lense stick out on the front though?

BlackMaGiC1o0

HTC should’ve released this then M8 imo. But come on exclusively to AT&T, seriously!? You guys just shot yourselves in the foot.

BenG

HTC really needs to reduce their bezels this things taller than the Note 3.

El_Big_CHRIS

umm well with the black bar, yes. ON top, they probably cant, I mean a 13 MP camera lens cant fit on a G3 bezel

BenG

I think if they went to an all glass front panel they could reduce the bezels but I could be wrong but yes on top it can’t get much smaller but I honestly don’t see the point of 13mp in the front anyways it seems like a waste why not just optimize a 5mp wide angle camera and if they want a flash throw a flash on there just my opinion.

Picaso86

What about getting rid of that HTC logo section and have a full screen.

ClikFire _

Those house components for the front facing speakers that are hidden very well.

TheFirstUniverseKing

Okay what? If Samsung came out with a design this ugly all of you would’ve shamed it, but since it’s HTC, it’s okay? I mean look at that ghastly front-facing camera and huge bezels (they could’ve stuffed a 5.5″ screen in the space of this device).

TFK

Yeah, HTC bezels suck and are regularly ridiculed. But at least the design is appealing and improved. If Samsung released ANYTHING like this, many would be more than shocked since Samsung devices are all the same stale appearance that look the same as models from 4 years ago.

AbbyZFresh

Just what we need, now we’ll have 13MP pics of narcissism.

trixnkix637

That design is freaking gorgeous!!! If this were coming to VZW I would seriously consider getting it. But alas, HTC doesn’t want my business. That 13MP front cam needs to be mandatory for OEMs going forward.

lol

Oh joy. AT&T exclusivity. What is this, 2008?

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

tbh At&t goes out of their way to have EVERY device possible. It could just be that the other carriers weren’t interested. The Desire line hasn’t really had a big US presence

And that my friend is why I left Verizon. They dropped the ball on the Note 1 and that was enough for me to leave

John Kitchen

The HTC First and the Fire Phone worked out really well though !

B Brad

Basically it’s an M8 with a larger screen (which uses more power), smaller battery, and plastic. Sadly despite using plastic they didn’t add wireless charging. They also carry over the large HTC logo and have a rather large phone for the screen size.

BB

I like the removable battery and water resistance. They finally moved the power button to a more reasonable location. As long as it’s not the dreaded glossy plastic then I think it’s fine.

FYLegend21

sadly I the rumours spread by upleaks appear to be false, the battery is embedded.

LionStone

You’d think they’d update the article about the removal battery …

Samvelavich

This phone looks gorgeous, and is obviously a great step forward in terms of what we can expect from HTC in the future. I think HTC would have benefitted more from focusing on the One Max or the M9. I don’t think that this phone will sell very well considering their One series isn’t doing completely stellar right now. From a business side, I don’t know what HTC’s plans are going forward, but I still think that, as a consumer, this announcement was pretty lackluster.

Alex B

“The Desire Eye is set to debut exclusively on AT&T this month.” HTC is dead they don’t want to make their phones widely avaliable especially when they are doing very poorly. Even I’m an ATT customer and disappointed by this.

Malik

It is so simple to us. Make the phone widely availabl . You ever think that these phones debut exclusively on ATT because they help fund it as in provide monetary assistance. Sometimes projects like these won’t see the light of day. Ofcourse it would be great if it debuted across all carriers but you better believe ATT paid HTC a lot for exclusivity.

Justin W

Or a swift “we won’t carry your next flagship if you don’t give us exclusivity on this one” would do. HTC can’t fight the big carriers like Samsung or Apple can (not that Samsung even tries at this point).

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

Design is gorgeous… I mean HTC doesn’t really even need to try. They just know how to design. And Kellen I think its only 16GB internal not 32GB.

I agree, design is very nice indeed BUT they need to put capacitive buttons down there with their HTC logo, otherwise they are simply just making it taller/bigger for no reason IMO!

Good_Ole_Pinocchio

They won’t go back to capacitive. Though they need to figure that out. Looks like they’re trying to push their branding, but that’s not the right place.

El_Big_CHRIS

True. I would like to have their logo on the back, like apple’s and have a case that shows that. HTC makes good-looking devices and I dont mind the subtle logos but ON THE BACK!!!

Dave

Looks like an iPhone upside down!

JD

Dedicated camera button! Way to go HTC!

SeanPlunk

Kind of. I love HTC design, but that phone is HUGE. It’s taller than a Note 3 for goodness sake. HTC really needs to start trimming the bezels down everywhere and for the love of God get rid of the black bar!

calculatorwatch

Yeah, at least with the Boomsound speakers on the One they had an excuse, but whats the justification here? Even with that huge camera they added a few more millimeters of bezel underneath it.

Marikel

It actually still has Boomsound from what I’ve heard. There’s a front facing speaker at the bottom in the small black gap between the black HTC bar and the white bar.

Looks pretty decent but that camera in the middle and the earpiece off to the side is weird. Thumbs up on the 13mp shooter on the front but why keep putting that stupid HTC branding bar at the bottom, they’ll never learn.

Carlos Lopez

At the very least its somewhat the same size as the top bezel

steve30x

Is it just one speaker or two?

Adam

The post specifically mentions BoomSound which points to double speakers but those renders don’t have any speaker grills that I can see. Plus, with that center camera they would have to do some fancy speaker placement on top. Strange…

steve30x

Yeah I was assuming the renders might of made it difficult to see. I’ll check youtube perhaps for hands on vids

dynamius

You can barely make them out in the press shots above, but they’re visible. They appear to be well hidden right in between the colored and the black sections of the front.